


i offered it up to the stars

by heartsfilthylesson



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, Post-I Want to Believe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 14:22:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsfilthylesson/pseuds/heartsfilthylesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are smudges on the ceiling, tiny spots of nothing but if she stares long enough, they become everything. They are the universe and the bottom of the ocean; Mulder’s hands and her father’s face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i offered it up to the stars

Her stomach knots and twists as she lays supine on the unmade bed and tries to will the nausea away. There are smudges on the ceiling, tiny spots of nothing but if she stares long enough, they become everything. They are the universe and the bottom of the ocean; Mulder’s hands and her father’s face.

“Scully?” She shifts and presses her face into the soft pillow. Constellations take shape behind her eyelids and she thinks she sees her mother’s smile somewhere between Bellatrix and Betelgeuse.

Mulder calls her again and this time he sounds so far away she almost believes he’s not there, not really. The mattress sinks under his weight and he brushes his knuckles against her temple. “It’s time to get ready.”

She wants to slip beneath the ugly forest green duvet and hide until the pressure in her chest relents, until the heaviness leaves her limbs and she feels whole again but Mulder holds out his hand and says he’s run her a bath. He helps her out of her dirty silk pajamas and into the tub. Twenty minutes later he knocks on the door. They can’t be late, not today.

When she returns to the room, hair washed and face scrubbed, the bed is made and her clothes are laid on it. She slips into the underwear and he kneels in front of her, rolls the nylons over her knees and thighs. He buttons the black dress and kisses her cheek.

“Mulder,” she says, and it’s dry and cracked. When she turns to face him, she presses her body into his and kisses his neck, hands at his belt. He reaches for her wrists and takes a step back, shakes his head and purses his lips.

_(This is not what she wants. This is not what she needs. They can’t be late, not today.)_

She huffs and folds her arms across her chest even as she slips on her shoes. She wants to try again, wants to distract him enough to lose track of the minutes and the hours and the days but lets him take her hand and lead her outside.

They don’t talk in the car. Mulder taps his fingers against the steering wheel and Scully reads every licence plate she can.  _Maryland. Virginia. New York._ The radio station plays uninterrupted hits. She’d forgotten how much she hates Phil Collins.

Bill is the first person she sees. He looks older and tired, shoulders sagging under the invisible weight of grief and loss, he looks like their father. She wonders if he thinks she looks like their mother but she feels broken and defeated, like she’s been cut into a hundred pieces. Maggie Scully is resilience and joy.

Mulder tenses beside her and lets go of her hand when Bill approaches. They hug and it’s brief and terse, like distant relatives. And it’s that not what they’ve become? Scully thinks of when she last saw her brother and finds she can’t remember. Someone’s birthday four years ago, perhaps more.

Father McCue stands behind the pulpit and he looks exactly like he did more than a decade ago, like he did when she was a teenager. It’s strange, she realises now, how well he knows her. He’s seen her bruised arms after fighting Charlie and scraped knees after falling from her bike; he’s seen her mourn the loss of her father and sister, of a child that was never truly hers and one that was hers but not for long.

His voice catches in the back of his throat. Father McCue loved her too, she knows, and moisture gathers in her eyes. She reaches for Mulder’s hand.

Charlie finds them outside the church and apologises for being late. His wife is pregnant again, and with three school-aged children already, even funerals are difficult to accommodate. She feels Mulder’s eyes on her, feels him tighten his hold on her hand.

It’s unbearably cold but they linger on the steps until Bill and his family join them. Tara kisses her cheek and Matthew, seventeen and so much taller than her, bends down to hug her. 

Maggie Scully wasn’t a sailor but she married the sea so they spread her ashes in the Chesapeake Bay.

Later, after a family lunch full of strained pauses and uncomfortable comments, she falls asleep in the sofa. Scully dreams of her parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary, of the hideous matching blue dresses their mother chose for her and Missy, of the tiny seashells on the cake; she dreams of her father’s succinct words,  _thank you for marrying me_ , and her mother’s long speech, of her tears and laughter.

“Mulder?” The only light in the room comes from the TV, college basketball on mute. Her feet are draped across his lap, his thumbs pressing into the space between her calcaneus and talus. “Mulder?”

He turns to look at her as the Terrapins score three points. “Sleep okay?”

Something coils in her stomach, grips at her chest. She closes her eyes, sees constellations behind her lids. Her father and her mother and her sister are supernovas in the centre of her universe. “I can’t believe she’s really dead.”

For the first time since Bill called — _Dana, mum died last night,_ — she cries.


End file.
